The adjuster nut is tightened into it's smallest position, and I hardly have the banjo nut tightened at all.  Even with the wheel/tire mounted I cannot turn the wheel by hand.  Is this happening just because I have brand new pads that are probably touching the drum?  Is this bad?

It is just suprising me beucase it wasn'too hard mounting the drum over the shoes, snug, but not hard to get the drum on.

Can you define "redid my brakes" have your replaced shoes, wheel cylinder, had your hubs off? What did you do?

Hubs should turn with wheels on with minimal resistance, only a little brake drag once adjusted. If you cannot move your hubs you've done something wrong.

Don't be afraid of asking how before you try something. You'll waste a lot of time and money doing thing the opposite way.

cheers

Warren

Did you have the drums turned at a shop? Usually if you bring them the new shoes when you bring them the drums, they make sue there is no binding. Sounds like either the drums need to be turned or the brake shoes need to be arched so they are matched.

Rono

Rono, I did not have the drums turned I was hoping I wouldn't need to do that. last time I needed drums turned I called a few places and I couldn't find anyone to do it, but that was years ago maybe I didn't try hard enough.  Do most brake service centers turn drums?

Even though I theoretically know better, I just hope that the new shoes will clean up the drum surface after a few stops. Maybe that is the issue, even though they feel pretty smooth, maybe the drum surface is too rough, it allows me to slide the drum over the shoes, but too rough to rotate.

I'm also taking this opportunity to convert to the 68 Bronco dual master cylinder, so I was "customizing" new brake line routes yesterday as well.

I'll have to wait until Tuesday to see if I can find a shop that still turns drums, but I'm worried it will be a ghost chase. The car has only 30k miles on it, and the drums seem to be in good shape, the shoes I took were basically new (still had clean stickers on them) but were probably installed 30 years ago when my uncle was driving it in the 70's, I had to take them out becuase the wheel cylinder let go and soaked everything in brake fluid otherwise they were in great shape.

Nate, welcome to car restoration. If it was easy everyone would be doing it. I'll ditto the "take your drums and shoes and get the drums machined and the shoes arced". A good brake place would have relined your old shoes at fraction of the cost of new. Did your hubs turn freely before you installed the drums? 

Cheers

Warren

The most recent phenomenon is that you can find parts on the part-store website, and even determine of they have the part in stock at the store in your neighborhood.  However when you get to the store, the staff at the store don't have acess to the same data that is on the website so unless I brought the part number with me, they can't always find the same part on the computers in the store!!  I had to drive back home to look up the part number on the company's OWN webiste, then drive back to the store and give them the part number so they can give me the part!  There is no excuse for that.

The brake shoes are only $20 for two sets (both front wheels), do places really still re-line the shoes for less than that?

I'll do some research on Tuesday to try and find a place to turn the drums, I took them both off now so I can take them in with the shoes and have it all "done up" properly.  I can't wait to drive around again, and it will be a different experience with confidence in my brakes!

You're right Old car, I will get some new springs, but the stores in town had to order the "Kit" as they didn't carry it in stock.  I've done two drum brake jobs before this one and they were both rear drum/front disc cars.  This is the first time I've had real drum brake tools!  What a difference! That little tool for un-hooking the re-turn springs makes it a snap!  So it'll be easy to replace the springs when I get a set.  Back in high school (in 1997) I had 69 marquis convertible I was using pliers and screw drivers to get the springs off and on, what a pain!

Oldcar, they are the same wheel cylinders?  Man oh man! They have 68 mustang wheel cylinders in stock at my local store (I just looked)!  They have a different part numbers than what I got for the 56, but they sure look the same in the picture.  Are they exactly the same or are they "also fit" parts?  Jeez, that would've saved me a ton of time to know that this past Friday.

One bit of wisdom I can relate though - keep a record of the part numbers, or model and type of vehicle you are pirating your parts from. My cheat sheets are now usually stuck in the back of my trusty shop manual and without them, it would be hard to negotiate with the commercial parts computers that are not loaded with the same quality of information

Some later Fords had shoes that are for 11 1/32 diameter drums instead of 11".  All other aspects of the shoes are identical except maybe the hole for the hold down springs.  Later holes are a little larger because of the self adjusting mechanism.  Anyway, if your drums have never been turned, the 11 1/32 shoes will not fit the drums.  Maybe that is what your problem is.  Turning the drums and arcing the shoes will fix it.  Early '55s also had cam adjusters in addition to the lower adjusting screw.  Does yours have these, one for each shoe?  Have you backed them off to their minimum setting?  These adjusters are just above the hold down springs, have an 11/16" headed bolt on the outside of the backing plate for adjusting them. 

Hey Hoosier, I don't have any "cams" that I could tell.  The brake set-up was pretty simple, two return springs, and one spring above the adjusting screw.  Not much in the backing plate excpet holes for the little hold-down spring pins and the little rubber access plug for the adjusting screw.

I used part number 228 for shoes from Checker/O'Reilly's Autoparts.  They are listed as 11 x 2.07 inches.  The shoes that were on the car measured about 2.25 inches wide so these were slightly narrower.

Roy

che

check width of brake shoes

Will that be a problem to pull the oil seal out?  Are they a pain to replace, I see another local parts store has the seals in stock, do I just tap it in flush with the rim of the inside of the drum?

What I usually do is take the castellated nut off, rock the hub enough to get the outer bearing and washer off, put the nut back on a couple of threads, and pull the drum off slide hammer style.  The seal and inner bearing will pop right out.  The bearing outer races do not need to be removed to turn the drums.  Clean and pack the bearings with grease, tap the new seal in flush, and you're good to go.

As you are re-doing your brakes I'd be replacing bearings and seals as a matter of course. (unless you are on a really tight budget). You shouldn't have to be back in there for a while. Bearings are not that expensive.

Just a thought do you know how to adjust front wheel bearings??

Cheers

Warren

Awesome! Thanks John!  Those are the tips that make my day!

Yeah, I suppose you're right Warren I'll pick up new bearings/seals.  I read about tightenening the castle nut in my repair manual, but I've never done it, it was darn loose when I took the drum off, not even finger tight.  Is there any tricks?

Over tight wheel bearings can cause the problem of drag that you initially described. There are a dozen different methods of adjusting front wheel bearings. All are a little hard to understand because it's a "by feel" thing.

Firstly the nut should be loose. A VW beetle that my ex owned called for a mic and an adjustment of 1 thou play at the edge of the disk. Which gives an indication of how they should be set. Grease and put your assembly together and hand tighten the nut until you cannot feel any play in the bearing by wiggling the hub drum. There should be about one notch (in the castlated nut) between noticeable play and none.  This is where you want it, loose then one notch to remove play. Put your wheel on and while it still off the ground give the wheel a wriggle as you've probably seen mechanics do and give it a spin. Be sure your feeling just the play in the bearing checking what is moving. There should be little to no play and just the slightest rolling resistance by hand. In use the bearing will expand with heat (friction) and give you your loading.  Too tight and you'll damage the bearing too loose and you'll damage the bearing.  Don't be afraid to do it several times to get the feel.    

When you are happy put you split pin in and the cap back on.

Cheers

Warren

So I went to bleed my new brake system, and I can't get a firm pedal.  I followed the instructions for bleeding the master, and had a rock hard pedal with the master and the bleeding plugs.  But then when I hooked up my lines and bled all four wheel cylinders, I ended up with a very soft pedal.

I had good fluid flow at each wheel cylinder, I bled it until I had no bubbles.  I don'tk now what the deal is.  I do have a small drip leak where the new rear line coming off the MC joins the existing line, but it doesn't seem that small leak should be accounting for my pedal being able to go down to the floor with all the bleeder valves closed??

Especially with a dual MC you'd think of the front brake circuit was tight and leak free, that I'd at least get pedal resistance from the fronts?

Any ideas?  Would a leak in the rear brake circuit account for the soft pedal?  I was wondering maybe the way the Master Cylinder is built, the first circuit to be pressurized during pedal travel is the rear cirucuit, and since there is a leak in the rear that is why I have so much pdeal travel.  And that I wouldn't feel the front pressure until I had almost gotten to the end of the pedal stroke, any truth to that theory?

I have the MC hooked up correctly, rear circuit to the front port etc. and I put a washer in the push rod opening to take up that extra slack from the 68 MC.

Chuck you,re 100 percent right with p/rod cup size problem. best regards bill.

You did adjust the brakes after turning the drums, didn't you?

The shop did not offer shoe "re-curving" so the shoes were not machined in any way to match the drum, but he said my drums were in good shape, he didn't have to do much but "clean 'em up", he said there was lots of metal left on the drums so I don't think they've been turned much, so I wouldn't think the drum would be much different in curvature than new pads?

Any leak in a brake system is just plain unaceptable. It's an accident waiting to happen. Besides just being rediculously dangerous you'll never sort your brakes out untill you fix the leak.

I,ve never put a bronco master in a 55 but it sounds like your push rod is too short. If you put a washer in between the cup of the master and the ball of the push rod you've done the wrong thing. the ball and socket need to go together. look for a longer push rod or better still an adjustable one.

Stop trying to take short cuts you need to be trying to do your best with every thing you do to the car. Things like brakes are safety items and you are not just endangering yourself but others. If it seems that you are doing something half arsed then stop and think. Ask before you tear off and do something stupid. It worrys me that some of these half arsed fixes are not being mentioned they only get aired once there is a further problem. How many more are there.

Warren

I appreciate your concern and safety always is number one, which is why I took this opportunity to upgrade to a dual master (68 bronco) so the two brake circuits are isolated and a leak in one ciruict wouldn't compromise the entire brake system.

I hope I didn't give the wrong impression, The leak just occurred today where I joined the new line to the existing rear, so this isn't something I've been hiding until now.  I haven't driven the car in this condition and I didn't intend to imply that a leaky line was an acceptable fix for any brake system.  The nut in the cup on the master cylinder was something I got off of this site.  http://www.y-blocksforever.com/forums/Topic30474-9-1.aspx

I'm definitly not trying to do anything half-arsed or dangerous.  I hope I haven't created the impression I don't take things seriously because that would probably lead to people not wanting to help me, and I really rely on all of you and enjoy the sense of coummunity.  Sometimes when I post things I'm just sharing on the forum becuase I want to share with others who care about cars, at home the only person I have to talk with is my wife and she has about a 45 second attention span when it comes to be talking about my car problems.

I fully intend to repair the leak before I go any further, but what has me confused is that the small leak that I see seems to be too small to account for the fluid that would normally be displaced with a full stroke of the brake pedal, which is what I'm able to do right now, so where is that fluid going?  I had good flow at all four wheels while bleeding the brakes and no air bubbles.  Is it possible that there is still air somewhere in the line even when no bubbles appear when bleeding?

Thanks Chuck I think that is a good idea, I'm going to start back at the beggining and bleed the MC again (after I fex the leak in the rear line).  This MC came with bleding "plugs" instead of the dual hose bleeding kit I've seen before.  The instructions say to screw these plastic plugs into the ports on the MC and then slowly stroke the master cylinder .75-1" max, until you have a firm pedal.  Apparently the MC pushing aginst these plugs pushes the air back up into the bowls. 

When I converted my 71 to front power discs, the MC came with two little hoses and some nozzles that fit snuggly into the ports, and you just cycled fluid out the ports and back into the bowls.  That systems seemed more intuitive than this bleeder "plug" system that came with the 68 bronco mc.  But I was able to get a very firm pedal with the plastic plugs in the outlet ports, so this new method seemed to be working.

Has anyone else used the plug-style MC bleeding before with sucess?

Nate, I,ve lost track of initial installation but is new M/Cyl bolted to front of inline booster? if so it is important as pointed out to (1) bench bleed M/Cyl on bench, old hands just use finger tips to lightly block holes allowing piston movement to push fluid and air out while quickly pushing fingers tighter over hole once done, VERY Important to avoid brake fluid in eyes or over car nearby, but works! (2) if bolted to a inline brake booster then adjust the little domed tip of booster pushrod to only slightly start pushing on back of M/C piston, not the pedal pushrod. If this IS your setup? follow these suggestions slowly step at a time and then give car light rebleed, plus readjust your shoes till they grab drum and back off only till the drum is free. This is usual timeproved method in my lifetime. good luck. regards bill.

yyy

Even after my drums were turned my drums don't "spin" freely when I put them on even before I tighten the spindle nut.  They move pretty easily, but they definitly don't "spin".  So the idea of expanding the adjuster until I feel "drag" and then backing of a few notches doesn't seem to work for me becuase the drag is there from the get go?

Here I was pretty happy with how my tube bending for the one line that goes under the front cross member ended up lining up with in the correct location!

Nate, OK, so no booster, recheck your shoes it looks like you have both short leading shoes on that side, i.e short shoe to front of car, long shoe to rear. refit drums, lightly tighten bearing nut while spinning drum till finger tite, readjust shoes and then recheck pedal feel, you must have a little bit of freeplay between the m/cl piston and the pedal rod.

However, when I got back to the garage, and I took out the new shoes, it appeared the shoes were all the same. I thought maybe I had been holding one shoe upside down or something before and that is why it looked like there were two different shoes.  So I didn't think anything more of it.

I'll get those straightened out, maybe that will loosen up the fit a little too so I have more room to adjust the brakes properly.

Maybe when I re-bleed the MC I'll take that nut out of there to be sure the master cylinder has toom to completely re-turn to zero position.  I'm pretty sure it does but I'm not positive, so it would be good to eliminate that variable.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/auto-parts/brakes/brake-types/drum-brake1.htm

The leading shoe provides actuation power to the trailing shoe - the reason most drum brakes work so much better in "forward" than "reverse".

I had good fluid flow at each wheel, I could see the fluid level rising in the clear bottle with each stroke of the brake pedal and could see there were no bubbles.  I was really shocked after I finished bleeding to climb in the car and be able to slowly push the pedal all the way to the floor.  It isn't floppy/loose there is resistance, but not much.

Thanks Greebird, that is a great animation. I never realized the whole shoe assembly shifted like that when braking, the leading shoe actually comes off the pin!

I switched the shoes around on my front drums to the shoes with less friction material is facing forward on both wheels.

I re-bled the system and still very soft pedal.

No fuild on the floor anywhere I can see.

Nate, why not try a cautious drive around your area, allowing time and distance to pull up behind traffic, only continue if it feels safe to do so, then readjust all the brakes and note if pedal pressure feels better. regards bill.

When I was switching the pads around to correct my mis-installation. I noticed what looks like a small amount of brake fluid running down the backing plate on the front driver's side. this is a brand new wheel cylinder, so this would be very frustrating if it is leaking but I'm afraid it might be.  Speaking of wheel cylinders what should I do with the old ones?  There was no core charge when I bought my new ones.  It seems a shame to throw this in the recycling bin.

I also need to look more closely at the rear brakes again now that I've gained so much knowledge on how these brakes are supposed to be set up.  I'm wondering if way back when I first pulled the rear drums off somehow one of the wheel cylinder rods came off the shoe or something. Something just isn't right, the fluid is going somewhere when I push on the pedal.  It is either leaking insde a rear drum brake and not come out on the floor yet, or something is expanding that isn't supposed to be (or both).

It just drives me crazy that only get an hour or two and then I'm called home, so I don't get a chance to look into everything.  Now I'm just left 8 miles from the car to hypothesize with my laptop. This is why I need this form as my therapy for when I can't actually go work on the car.

On a positive note, I've taken the brakes apart so many times now, what used to be a dreaded gask I can almost do in my sleep in about 90 seconds!

Nate, Go Back to square 1, inspect each brake assy,one at a time!  and be sure every component is correct, installed properly, no leaks, refit drum and do next one. Could one of the wheel cyl rods not be located in brake shoe and is just moving back and forth, thus allowing poor pedal pressure? this is easy to do on rear shoes as the park brake spreader plate covers it. good luck.

Ron, thats nice of you to offer nate some expeirenced help, i couldnt but help thinking if any members or viewers might be able to offer a hand. Bravo.

Ron, thanks a ton for the offer!  That is very generous, and I might get to that point.  Right now I just need more time for myself to be at the garage before I waste anyone elses.

It really slows my progress when I can only get out to the car for a couple hours per week (or every other week).  This last time I felt like I was so close, I knew my fronts brakes are sorted out and it occured to me while I was standing in the garage that it has to be something like a disconnected wheel cylinder rod in the rear brakes.  But before I could take off the rear wheels to check, my wife called and said "I hope you're on your way home!".  She said it in that tone of voice that I knew I'd better drop everything and driving like heck towards the homestead! (by the way, my wife is awesome...she lets me keep broken down old cars in the driveway and rent a remote garage to keep more old cars, she mows the lawn and makes great food, she is very patient with me so I'm not complaining!)

All my lines are replace and new with the exception of the two lines on the rear axle, I see no drips or leaks on the ground under the car.  I get good fluid flow at each wheel when bleeding.  But the pedal is so soft and almost goes to the floor after I'm done.  It has to be something obvious like the rear wheel cylinder disconnected that bill mentions, now I can't wait to go check.  I might try to sneak out tonight to go look!

I may have been a bit harsh before but we are dealing with your safety and learning off a internet forum is not the best way to learn.

Ron, thanks for your offer I think some hands on mentoring is what Nate needs.

Nate your brake system is under a lot of pressure. Leaks may not appear as drips on the ground clean. Check all the joints that you have made with clean hands look (touch) every joint and if there is any presence of brake fluid you have a leak and you will not be able to get full pressure. Leaks will require tightening with a flange nut spanner. Some of these joints will end up surprisingly tight. You may have to redo double flanges or replace lines If you get some pressure then it drops away you have a leak. 

Just a thought was your M/C new/second hand/reconditioned. Just because it's new doesn't mean it's right. You should have good flow at all wheels.

What have you done to correct the length of your pushrod. A poorly adjusted pedal can give the feeling of spongy brakes. Remember the brake pedal leverage ratio, a lot of travel at the end could be only a few millimeters at the master. Do you get good pressure close to the floor?

Cheers

Warren

Your posts indicate you have not had the rear brakes apart.  The actuating pin in the wiheel cylinder will not just jump out of an intact brake assembly.  You have mentioned soft pedal, and also the pedal goes slowly to the floor when you hold pressure on it.  Which is it?  If it slowly goes to the floor, and no external leak, then the fluid is bypassing the pressure cup in the master cylinder.